There are quite a few striking moments in Sreemoyee Singh’s personal-meets-political documentary And, Towards Happy Alleys (currently streaming on Mubi), where she points her camera onto the internal dynamics of Iranian society through the framework of the country’s rich tradition of poetry and films. She meets filmmakers, feminist activists and scholars in order to explore patriarchy and the extreme conservatism that pervades Iran. However, what made a filmmaker from India so deeply interested in making a film about a ‘distant country’? Iran never felt like a far-off land to Sreemoyee.
She found many similarities in its geography and culture with India. “We are so close to each other,” says Sreemoyee, who also learnt Persian to make the film. For her, even the language didn’t seem alien.
“Persian was a court language in India and it has influences on many other languages spoken in the subcontinent. Since I speak Hindi, Urdu, and Bangla, I was able to pick up Persian faster.” Sreemoyee feels that learning the language is important to understanding the culture of Iran.
“So much is lost when you cannot speak the native tongue or if you don’t even make the effort to learn it while filming in a different cultural setting.” It was cinema itself that started her fascination with the country. Sreemoyee was introduced to Iranian films while doing her post-graduation in Film Studies at Jadavpur University.
“I hadn’t watched films like that before,” she sa.